Author's Note: This is a very small character piece, a view on the relationship between Ric and Alexis. It is a one-shot that will not be expanded upon.
They were a formidable pair. When they agreed, there was nothing and no one that could stand in their way. When they disagreed, no one wanted to stand between them. When they were together, a legal storm would fall on the head of any who crossed them. When they were apart...
She hated him, and it was all his fault. Ric Lansing was an insufferable jackass with a streak of self-righteousness that he didn't deserve. It would serve him right if she called down the mightiest of Cassadine curses upon his head. He would be gone within seconds, and she would feel no remorse. He would have brought it all upon himself, the betraying and adulterous scum. She was a Cassadine, by God, and there was none who would treat a Cassadine in so callous a manner and not pay.
He wished he'd never gotten involved with her in the first place. Only bad could come from a love built on blackmail and deceit. And who was she, anyway, to look down on him? She was a murderess. She was a blackmailer. Alexis Davis wasn't a woman of pristine background, no matter how much she tried to pretend. And how dare she actually be angry with him for finally learning to love his brother? Hadn't she loved her own brother when others told her it was ridiculosu? He could have... and should have... sued her for-- for-- For being a self-righteous little bitch and passing it on to her children.
They were a pair made of love and hate, and both emotion was equally as strong. In the current days, their hate was the strongest, and it fell upon whomever happened to be closest. He hid his own better than she did, but when they looked at each other... Oh, they knew that either of them could be dying of thirst on the street and the other wouldn't have spit on them. But, when their love took first prize...
She told him not to kiss her so many times, and yet, he always did. He did it with a smile, one that she wouldn't return. It took work to keep her face straight, though. When he held her, she wanted to climb inside of him. Finally, a man who was on her level on both sides of the fence. Ned could only connect with her good. Sonny could only understand her bad. But Ric had them both, and he felt them both... and he loved them both.
He loved that scowl, the one that knitted her brow and made her eyes grow dark. The one that he assumed her mother must have had, because he'd seen no Cassadine make a similar face. The one that hid the fact that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her. Alexis was a thorny rose, and though the treat was the twisting bed of red, he wanted to make sure that he passed over every prickly thorn before the sweet treat. Her fire and ice, her love and hate.
They were something that should have been more.
They were something that could have been more.
They were...
Alexis and Ric Lansing... The very personification of paradox.